Returning to the Classroom…Finally

Photo by Seema Miah on Unsplash

After twenty-three months, there was excitement about returning to the classroom until I tried to find a pair of pants without a constricting waistband. Something more professional and professorial than my ubiquitous uniform of yoga pants and bare feet.

I want to teach in bare feet, my toes unaccustomed to the restricting form of the shoes that once carried me across campus. My feet begin to ache now if I wear them for more than thirty minutes. Are Vans professional?

I see the tubes of red lipstick in my drawer, a pandemic color that made me smile on camera, on the days when Zoom teaching felt particularly draining.

I won’t wear the red now. It won’t be seen behind the required mask in the classroom, a mask I am beginning to hope will shield me from their looks, from being seen in too-tight pants. Was the screen I loathed a screen of protection? I wonder as a new bout of self-consciousness emerges with the prospect of standing in front of students.

But I love standing in front of students. Or, I did. Do I still?

The corners of my eyes begin to sting as I turn into the campus parking lot, a drive I haven’t done in two years. I have missed the anticipation of walking to class with all the other people walking to their classes.

Now, I gather my bag but its weight on my shoulder strains my back. My shirt bunches a little at the sleeves. I want to strip down in the parking lot and reassemble my clothes and accessories so they fit just right. But I will not strip down in the parking lot. I will try and minimize my fidgeting. Try and look like I am in possession of myself.

I love passing students heading to their classes but feel worried about making eye contact, sure my memory will fail me, seeing a student who knows me but I can’t remember them right away. The masks aren’t helping. This is a new awkwardness in a crowd. Am I the absent-minded professor? Is this a new identity I should embrace?

I’ll need different masks, I think, as my mouth begins to sweat. It gets worse the longer I walk around the brand new building trying to figure out where the department office is. Like a freshman wandering lost, I can’t find where I’m supposed to be. I am certain people are watching. What is she doing? I finally give up and text another professor.

It’s on the third floor? Why is the office on the top floor? Is this for the view?

I meet the new office administrator and am quickly distracted by the running questions that cloud my mind. Why am I sweating? What did I come here for? Where is the adjunct office? Does she have dry erase markers?

I find my classroom at the end of an outdoor corridor. A few students outside. I greet them with a boisterous hello. Too boisterous? Is my volume too loud? Did I forget how to modulate my voice?

I have been teaching in a room by myself for too long.

And now, I am in a classroom again and again the rules have changed. The building has changed. I forgot how aerobic teaching is for me. I am out of breath again, the mask sucking into my mouth as I inhale. I berate myself for this obnoxious visual I’m providing the students. Is she going to have a heart attack, I imagine them thinking.

I employ self-deprecating humor. It is out of my mouth before I consider that I don’t have to verbally describe everything I am feeling.

Light chuckles.

My defense is to explain, out loud, all that is happening both in my head and in the classroom, in real-time. I am not entirely sure this is a helpful strategy but it is happening anyway. I am trying to lower my pulse rate, cut the mounting pressure in my head, and make these people smile. I reason that when they are smiling, or discussing class material, they are not judging me. It may be faulty reasoning but it works for now.

I am attempting to make coherent points about gender and culture while trying to figure out how to adjust the screen that apparently doesn’t go up manually like they did in the old building.

“There are buttons on the wall over there, Ms. Ream,” one student helpfully points out as I fumble with the new technology.

I don’t have time to attend to the internal voice that whispers, “Your credibility is slipping away. What professor doesn’t know how to use the screens? They can see you, you know.”

And then the class is over.

All the students leave but one who had snuck out for a bathroom break and returned to collect his things. He asks a question about an upcoming assignment and we chat about his return to campus. I slowly remember that I love this part. Talking with a student. I mumble something about the learning curve in a new classroom and he replies that it seems like everyone is having to navigate a lot of new things right now.

“We’re in this together,” I reply, one of my catchphrases from a different time. And as we leave the classroom together, I begin to plan my outfit for my next day on campus.